In his early years of practice, Ãcariya
Mun often wandered dhutanga in the company of Ãcariya
Sao, comforted in the knowledge that he had a good,
experienced teacher to lend him support. But when he
asked his teacher to advise him on specific problems
arising in his meditation, Ãcariya Sao invariably
replied: “My experiences in meditation are quite
different from yours. Your citta is so adventurous,
tending always toward extremes. One moment it soars
into the sky, only to plunge deep into the earth the
next. Then, after diving to the ocean floor, it
again soars up to walk meditation high in the sky.
Who could possibly keep up with your citta long
enough to find a solution? I advise you to
investigate these matters for yourself and find your
own solutions.” Ãcariya Sao never gave him enough
concrete advice to really help him, so Ãcariya Mun
was forced to solve his own problems. Sometimes, he
nearly died before discovering a way past some of
the more intractable problems he faced.

Ãcariya
Mun described his teacher as someone with a smooth,
serene temperament who inspired deep devotion. A
rather strange feature of Ãcariya Sao’s practice was
his tendency to levitate while in samãdhi, his body
hovering quite noticeably above the floor. At first,
doubtful that his body was indeed floating, he
opened his eyes to see for himself. As soon as his
eyes opened, concern about the condition of his body
caused his citta to withdraw from samãdhi. He
promptly fell back to the floor, landing hard on his
buttocks which was sore and bruised for many days.
In truth, his body did float about three feet above
the floor. But by opening his eyes to check, he lost
the mindfulness needed to maintain his citta in samãdhi. Withdrawing
suddenly from samãdhi caused him to come crashing to
the floor, like any other object dropped from a
height. Practicing samãdhi later and feeling his
body levitate again, he kept mindfulness firmly
focused within that state of samãdhi, and then,
carefully opened his eyes to look at himself. It was
obvious to him then that he did levitate. This time,
however, he didn’t fall back to the floor, for
mindfulness was present to maintain total
concentration.

This experience taught Ãcariya Sao a
valuable lesson about himself. Yet being an
exceptionally careful, meticulous person, he wasn’t
entirely convinced. So he took a small object,
inserted it into the underside of the thatched roof
in his hut, and continued to meditate. When he felt
his body beginning to float again, he firmly focused
his citta in samãdhi, and he was able to float
upward until he reached that small object in the
thatch. Drawing level with it, he slowly reached out
and very mindfully took it in his hand so that he
could bring it back down by means of samãdhi. This
meant that once he had it in his grasp, he gradually
withdrew from samãdhi to the point where his body
could slowly, and safely, descend to the floor – a
point still short of complete withdrawal from
samãdhi. Experimenting like this, he became
convinced of his ability to levitate, though this
did not occur every time he entered samãdhi.

From the beginning of his practice to
the end of his life, Ãcariya Sao’s citta tended to
have this smooth, imperturbable quality; in sharp
contrast to the wholly adventurous nature that
characterized Ãcariya Mun’s citta. Unlike him, Ãcariya
Sao was not so motivated to live dangerously,
seeking adventure; nor did he tend to perceive the
variety of unusual phenomena that Ãcariya Mun
invariably did.

Ãcariya Mun
told us that, once, in ages past, Ãcariya Sao had
resolved to become a Paccekabuddha. Intensifying
his efforts at meditation caused him to recollect
his longtime resolution, and his lingering
attachment to that goal made him reluctant to strive
for Nibbãna in the present. It soon became apparent
that this vow would block any attempt to realize
Nibbãna in his lifetime; therefore, he immediately
decided to renounce the old vow. In its place, he
resolved to attain Nibbãna as soon as possible. He
became determined to reach this goal within his
present lifetime in order to avoid the misery of
being reborn in the future.

Having forsaken his original vow, and
thus, unhindered by previous commitments, his
meditation practice progressed smoothly until one
day he finally reached the Land of Ultimate
Happiness that he had been aiming for. However, his
teaching skill was very limited, probably due to a
natural predisposition toward becoming a
Paccekabuddha: someone who has no inclination to
teach others although he is able to fully enlighten
himself. Furthermore, the fact that he could so
easily give up his original resolve and then achieve
his new goal meant that his previous vow had not yet
matured to the stage of being irreversible.

Ãcariya Mun
related that in ages past he had made a similar
resolution– in his case, a solemn vow to become a
Buddha. As with Ãcariya Sao, intensifying his
efforts at meditation caused Ãcariya Mun to
recollect this long-standing intention, and this
underlying attachment made him reluctant to strive
for the attainment of Nibbãna in his present life.
Ãcariya Mun renounced his vow to be a Buddha only
after he began practicing dhutanga kammaååhãna, for
he then realized that its fulfillment would take far
too long. It required eons of traversing the round
of saÿsãra: being born, growing old, becoming ill,
and dying over and over again, enduring misery and
pain indefinitely. Renouncing the original vow
relieved Ãcariya Mun of this concern, opening the
way for his meditation to progress smoothly. The
fact that he could so easily abandon the original
vow indicates that it was not yet so firmly fixed in
his conscious being that he couldn’t detach himself
from it.

Ãcariya Mun
often accompanied Ãcariya Sao on his excursions
wandering dhutanga across the provinces of the
Northeast region. Due to differences in personality,
their meditation experiences varied in some
respects; but each very much enjoyed the other’s
company. By nature, Ãcariya Sao preferred to say
very little. He was a reluctant teacher, especially
of the laity. Occasionally obliged to give
instruction to lay supporters, he was always very
frugal with words. The little he did say could be
summed up like this: “You should renounce evil and
cultivate goodness. Being fortunate enough to be
born human, don’t waste this good opportunity now.
Our status as human beings is a very noble one; so,
avoid all animal-like behavior. Otherwise, you’ll
sink below the animals, and be much more wretched as
well. When you eventually fall into hell, your
tortuous existence there will be far more grievous
than that of any animal. So don’t do evil!”

That said, he left his seat and
returned to his hut, taking no further interest in
anyone.

He always spoke very sparingly. In an
entire day he might say only a few sentences. On the
other hand, he could endure many hours of sitting
and walking in meditation. He had a remarkably
dignified, noble appearance that inspired respect
and devotion. Just a glimpse of his serene, peaceful
countenance made a lasting impression. He was
greatly revered by monks and laity alike and, like Ãcariya
Mun, he had many devoted disciples.

It was well known that these two ãcariyas shared
immense love and respect for each other. In the
early years, they enjoyed traveling in each other’s
company. They spent most of the year living
together, both during and after the annual rainy
season retreat.

In the middle years, they normally
spent these retreats in separate locations but close
enough to each other to make visiting easy. Very
seldom, then, did they spend a retreat together, for
each had an increasingly large following of
disciples, making it difficult to find enough space
to accommodate them all at one location. Living
separately eliminated the burden of having to
arrange living quarters for so many monks.

Even when living
apart, they often thought of each other with genuine
concern. On occasions when Ãcariya Sao’s disciples
visited Ãcariya Mun, the first question he asked
concerned the health and wellbeing of Ãcariya Sao,
who in turn invariably reciprocated by inquiring
about Ãcariya Mun’s well-being when one of his
disciples paid a visit. Through such messengers,
each then conveyed his respectful greeting to the
other, maintaining contact in this way at every
opportunity. Each of these great ãcariyas had
enormous respect for the other’s spiritual
achievements. Both used words full of praise and
admiration when speaking to their disciples about
each other. Their comments never contained a hint of
criticism.

ÃCARIYA MUN
WHOLEHEARTEDLY agreed with Ãcariya Sao’s comment
about his citta being adventurous, and tending to go
to extremes: soaring high in the sky one moment,
then plunging into the earth before diving to the
ocean floor. His citta truly did have such mercurial
characteristics. Dropping into samãdhi in the early
stages of his practice, his citta tended to focus
outward then, perceiving all manner of unusual
phenomena – things he had never dreamed of seeing.
For example, he saw a bloated corpse laid out before
him. As I have mentioned before, when he
concentrated his attention on this image, it soon
changed into a translucent disc which in turn
altered its form, creating an endless series of
images.

Even after discovering the correct
method of practice, when his citta ‘converged’ into
calm it was still inclined to focus outward,
perceiving countless types of phenomena. Sometimes,
he felt his body soaring high into the sky where he
traveled around for many hours, looking at celestial
mansions before coming back down. At other times, he
burrowed deep beneath the earth to visit various
regions in hell. There he felt profound pity for its
unfortunate inhabitants, all experiencing the
grievous consequences of their previous actions.
Watching these events unfold, he often lost all
perspective of the passage of time. In those days,
he was still uncertain whether these scenes were
real or imaginary. He said that it was only later
on, when his spiritual faculties were more mature,
that he was able to investigate these matters and
understand clearly the definite moral and
psychological causes underlying them. Any lapse in
concentration as his citta ‘converged’ into calm
created an opening through which it could again
focus outward to perceive such phenomena. His
newfound proficiency notwithstanding, if his
attention turned outward, his citta would be off in
a flash.

Ãcariya Mun
told us that early on, due to inexperience with the
mercurial nature of his own mind, when focusing his citta to
examine he lower half of his body, instead of
following the various parts down to the soles of his
feet, it would shoot out through his lower torso and
penetrate deep into the earth – just as Ãcariya Sao
had so astutely remarked. No sooner had he hurriedly
withdrawn the citta back into his body than it would
fly through the top of his head, soaring high into
the sky where it paced back and forth contentedly,
showing no interest in returning to his body.
Concentrating with intense mindfulness, he had to
force the citta to reenter the body and perform the
work he wanted it to do.

In those early days his mind
developed a tendency to drop so speedily into a
state of calm – like falling from a cliff, or down a
well – that his mindfulness couldn’t keep up with
it. Resting only briefly in complete stillness
before withdrawing slightly to the level of upacãra
samãdhi, his citta tended to venture out so often,
and experienced such a variety of strange things,
that he became very frustrated. He tried to force it
to remain inside the confines of his body, but often
to no avail. His citta was far too fleeting for
mindfulness and wisdom to keep pace.

Still too inexperienced to work out
an effective solution, he felt uneasy about the
direction of his meditation. Yet, being a strictly
internal matter, he couldn’t mention his predicament
to anyone else. So, with an intense degree of
mindfulness and wisdom to guide his efforts, he
experimented with many different techniques,
suffering considerable mental strain before finding
a viable means of controlling his adventuresome
citta. Once he clearly understood the correct method
of taming his dynamic mind, he found that it was
versatile, energetic, and extremely quick in all
circumstance. Eventually working in unison,
mindfulness and wisdom blended so well with the citta that
they merged to become one with it. Thus
strengthened, the citta functioned like a magic
crystal ball; and he was fully capable of keeping
pace with all the myriad phenomena arising within
it.

Ãcariya Mun
possessed a bold, fearless character. He was also
extremely intelligent. Because his rigorous training
methods differed significantly from ones practiced
by other monks, his style of practice was
unique – and incredibly difficult to imitate. From
my own observations, I can unequivocally state: He
was a truly noble character with a quick,
adventurous mind who trained himself with
uncompromising resolve. His harsh training methods
were often quite unique. He had an ingenious way of
mixing coercive pressure and gentle persuasion to
tame a dynamic mind that, at the least lapse of
concentration, ventured out to find things that
could easily cause him problems.

Struggling desperately on his own to
find ways to control his unruly mind, practicing
without a dependable guide and enduring
difficulties, Ãcariya Mun sometimes felt that he was
beating his head against a mountain. Unlike so many
others, he had to manage without the aid of a wise
teacher’s proven meditation methods – a disadvantage
he often warned others against later on. To his own
students he always emphasized his readiness to
clarify any problems they experienced in meditation,
thus saving them the difficulty of having to waste
time as he had in his early years.

SHORTLY AFTER HIS
ORDINATION, Ãcariya Mun began wandering dhutanga in
Nakhon Phanom province, and eventually crossed the
Mekong River to enter Laos, where he contentedly
practiced the ascetic way of life in the mountainous
district of Tha Khek. This area of Laos abounded in
large, ferocious tigers – huge beasts that were
considered far more vicious than tigers on the Thai
side of the river. Repeatedly they attacked and
killed the local inhabitants and then feasted on
their flesh. Despite such brutality, those people,
mostly of Vietnamese descent, weren’t nearly as
afraid of tigers as were their Lao and Thai
neighbors.

Time and again they watched these
terrible beasts attack and kill friends and
relatives; yet, they seemed indifferent to the
carnage. Having seen a friend killed right in front
of them, the flesh torn from the body by a hungry
tiger, the people would casually venture back into
that same tiger-infested forest the next day, as
though nothing had happened. The Lao and Thai
communities would have been extremely upset, but the
Vietnamese seemed strangely unmoved by such
occurrences. Perhaps they were so accustomed to
seeing such things that it no longer affected them.

The Vietnamese had another strange
habit: When they saw a maneating tiger suddenly leap
out to attack one of their companions, no one in the
group made any effort to save their friend’s life.
They simply abandoned their friend to his fate and
ran for their lives. Suppose a group were sleeping
in the forest overnight. If a huge tiger leaped into
the campsite and dragged one of them away, the
others, awakened by the noise, would jump up and run
away; and then, calmly find another place close by
to sleep. Like children, they acted without much
rhyme or reason in these matters. They behaved as
though those huge beasts, which had already shown
themselves to be so adept at devouring human flesh,
were somehow too stupid to do the same to them.

I am also familiar with people who
have no proper fear of tigers. When coming to live
in our country, they like to settle in dense,
overgrown jungle areas abounding in tigers and other
wild animal. Venturing deep into the forest in
search of timber, they then spend the night there
far from the village, showing no signs of fear at
all. Even alone, these people can sleep deep in the
forest at night without fear. If they wish to return
to the village late at night, they have no qualms
about walking alone through the dense undergrowth,
and back if necessary. If asked why they aren’t
afraid of tigers, their response is that, while the
huge tigers in their own country have a taste for
human flesh, Thai tigers don’t; and that they’re
even scared of people. Conditions can be so
dangerous in their homeland that people staying
overnight in the forest must build an enclosure to
sleep in that resembles a pigsty; otherwise, they
might never return home. Even within the precincts
of some village communities, prowling tigers can be
so fierce that no one dares leave home after dark,
fearing an attack by a tiger leaping out of the
shadows. The Vietnamese even chide the Thais for
being such cowardly people, always entering the
forest in groups, never daring to venture out alone.
For these reasons, Ãcariya Mun claimed that the
Vietnamese lacked an instinctive fear of tigers.

When Ãcariya Mun crossed into their
country, however, the tigers there never bothered
him. Camped in the forest, he often saw their tracks
and heard their roars echoing through the trees at
night. However, he never felt personally threatened
by such things; they were simply natural aspects of
forest life. In any case, Ãcariya Mun wasn’t worried
about tigers so much as he was worried about the
possibility that he might not transcend dukkha and
realize the Supreme Happiness of Nibbãna in his
lifetime.

When speaking of his excursions
crossing the Mekong River, he never mentioned being
afraid. He obviously considered such dangers to be a
normal part of trekking through the wilds. If I had
been faced with those same dangers instead of Ãcariya
Mun, surely the local villagers would have had to
form a posse to rescue this cowardly dhutanga monk.
When I’m walking in meditation in the forest at
night, just the occasional roar of a tiger so
unsettles me that I can barely manage to keep
walking to the end of the track. I fear coming face
to face with one of those beasts – and losing my
wits. You see, since becoming old enough to
understand such things, I always heard my parents
and their neighbors vociferously proclaim that
tigers are very fierce animals, and extremely
dangerous. This notion has stuck with me ever since,
making it impossible not to be terrified of tigers.
I must confess that I’ve never found a way to
counteract this tendency.

ÃCARIYA MUN
SPENT most of the earlier years of his monastic
career traveling at length through the various
provinces of Thailand’s Northeast region. Later, as
he developed enough inner stability to withstand
both external distractions and those mercurial
mental traits that were so much a part of his
character, he walked down into the central
provinces, wandering contentedly across the Central
Plains region, living the dhutanga lifestyle until
eventually he reached the capital, Bangkok. Arriving
shortly before the rainy season, he went to Wat
Pathumwan monastery and entered the retreat there.
During the rains retreat he made a point of
regularly going to seek advice from Chao Khun Upãli
Guõýpamãcariya at Wat Boromaniwat monastery to gain
more extensive techniques for developing wisdom.

Ãcariya Mun
left Bangkok following the rains retreat, hiking to
Lopburi province to stay awhile at Phai Khwang Cave
in the Phra Ngam mountain range before moving on to
Singto Cave. Life in such favorable locations gave
him an excellent, uninterrupted opportunity to fully
intensify his spiritual practice. In doing so, he
developed a fearless attitude toward his mind and
the things with which it came in contact. By then,
his samãdhi was rock-solid. Using it as the firm
basis for his practice, he examined everything from
the perspective of Dhamma, continually uncovering
new techniques for developing wisdom. After a
suitable interval, he returned to Bangkok, once
again visiting Chao Khun Upãli at Wat Boromaniwat.
He informed his mentor of developments in his
meditation practice, questioning him about doubts he
still had concerning the practice of wisdom.
Satisfied that the new investigative techniques he
had learned were sufficient to further his progress,
he finally took leave of Chao Khun Upãli and left to
seek seclusion at Sarika Cave in the Khaw Yai
mountains of Nakhon Nayok province.